Global Warming-Energy-Environment

The IPCC says it’s still possible to limit planetary warming to an additional 0.5 degrees C (0.9 F) “above pre-industrial levels”—but only if global CO2 emissions are halved by 2030 and zeroed out by 2050.

So climate alarmists intend to carbon-tax, legislate and regulate our energy, factories, livelihoods, living standards, liberties and lives to the max. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal would eliminate and replace US fossil fuels by 2030. It’s an unprecedented economic and political power grab.

We went to war with King George over far less serious abuses and usurpations. And yet today we seem to have few Patrick Henrys or other stalwart, principled leaders willing to defy this insanity.

As the big German daily Die Zeit reports, the Intl. Monetary Fund (IMF) thinks that global growth will slow to 3.5% this year, down from 3.7% forecast a few months ago (imf.org ).

What a disaster; it ought to put a crimp on the assembled economic and political leaders’ annual confustications at the World Economic Forum (WEF) secretive meeting at Davos (Switzerland) this week. As participation is by invitation only and all speeches and discussions are strictly following the Chatham House Rules and hence are not made public, who knows what the future holds—not that any meaningful summary has ever been communicated from that “skiing-fest” in the Swiss Alps.

It may be useful to look back at history, the long history of Earth, to get a glimpse of the future.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2019 — To many people, flamingos are synonymous with Florida, tacky lawn ornaments and cocktails on the beach. But their silly reputation belies their incredible survival skills. Flamingos are adapted to live and breed in some of the harshest environments on Earth. In this video, Reactions explains why flamingos deserve more credit:

China recently put the brakes on solar and wind energy, indicating that it will no longer approve wind and solar power projects unless they can compete with coal power prices. In late May 2018, China issued “2018 Solar PV Power Generation Notice,” imposing caps on solar energy and reducing feed-in tariffs on those projects. More recently, China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration provided a series of conditions under which new solar and wind projects would be approved through the end of 2020. Conditions include that the price must match or undercut the national coal benchmark and that the projects must show that the grid can handle their output. In 2017, 12 percent of wind generation and 6 percent of solar generation was curtailed due to lack of transmission capacity.

OPEC’s largest producer continues to expect global oil demand to keep rising at least by 2040 and sees itself as the oil producer best equipped to continue meeting that demand, thanks to its very low production costs.

Saudi Arabia will be the one to pump the last barrel of oil in the world, but it doesn’t see the ‘last barrel of oil’ being pumped for decades and decades to come.

London--A prominent epidemiologist has accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of inserting a false narrative into the debate on air pollution and health.

Dr Mikko Paunio, an adviser to the Finnish government, says that the panel has persuaded the World Health Organisation to back the idea that power production and transport in the developed world are major causes of air pollution deaths worldwide. In reality, according to Dr Paunio, most air pollution harms are found in the developing world, where people have no alternative to burning wood, dung and coal on primitive stoves.

Most consumers’ exposure to toxic methylmercury occurs when they eat fish. But research just published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology could help clarify why methylmercury concentrations in tuna vary geographically.

Carbon dioxide must be an almighty gas – it gets blamed for almost every human disaster.

Now we have the alarmist Climate Council blaming bushfires on carbon dioxide and global warming. Focussing on the wrong problem is doing more harm than good. It is disappointing to see respected firefighters like Greg Mullins now blaming “climate change” for more and worse bushfires, and now even promoting the misguided Climate Council.

The number of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs) in the U.S. shale patch has skyrocketed by roughly 60 percent over the past two years. That leaves a rather large backlog that could add a wave of new supply, even if the pace of drilling begins to slow.

The backlog of DUCs has continued to swell, essentially uninterrupted, for more than two years. The total number of DUCs hit 8,723 in November 2018, up 287 from a month earlier. That figure is also up sharply from the 5,271 from the same month in 2016, a 60 percent increase. The EIA will release new monthly DUC data on January 22, which will detail figures for December.

All across the United States, private property rights are under assault—assault by state and federal legislators and regulators, environmentalist groups, wealthy liberal foundations, corporations and other special interests, often acting in coordination or collusion with one another. They are seizing or taking control of lands and other valuable property without due process or just compensation, under a host of environmental and other justifications, many of which are fictional at best.

I have personally witnessed attempts to shut down the small mining industry in my state of Colorado. Exploration and development by this industry often results in discoveries of major deposits of minerals that are essential for everything we make, use and do—including medical equipment, cell phones, computers, aircraft, aerospace, automobiles, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and modern high-tech weapon and communication systems.

There is a new battery type being hyped, with terms such as “Quantum Glass” battery or even “The Jesus Battery” and a claim that “It Will Ignite the Global $3 Trillion Electric Car Revolution.” Go and see it for yourself at investorplace.com (video transcript available from me), Forbes, and other financial information services.

This touted breakthrough in battery technology is the latest in a slew of innovative ideas that include “batteries made with sand,” “stretchable batteries,” “foam batteries,” “pee powered batteries,” “laser-made micro-super-capacitors” and more (13 Amazing Battery Innovations That Could Change The World ).

Like dozen towns and cities in Massachusetts and other states, Boston recently enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags. It went into effect December 14, 2018. It was a relatively easy vote, because “evil” plastic bags have received extensive bad press that generally ignores important facts.

The same holds true in other jurisdictions, especially those controlled by Democrats who a generation ago cared about American workers, but today too often subjugate the needs of blue collar families to demands by college educated and environmentalist elites, and even noisy grade school kids.

One of the hottest topics in policy wonk circles is the “Green New Deal,” spearheaded by the rising star of the progressive Left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In my previous post, I explained that the entire premise of a current New Deal—whether green, red, or blue—was flawed. Even on standard Keynesian terms, it makes no sense to embark on a $1 trillion government spending program with official unemployment below 4 percent and the Fed raising rates to rein in price inflation. Worse, historically the actual New Deal under Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the nation’s suffering, making the Great Depression linger for a decade. Finally, I pointed out that the supporters of a Green New Deal weren’t merely interested in mitigating climate change: they quite openly announce that they will use the plan as a vehicle for transforming society according to the standard progressive wish list.

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